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‘Life sentence,’ but Eaton Centre killer will be eligible for parole in 16 months

In a year and four months, Christopher Husbands will be eligible for parole.

In fact, for his conviction on two counts of manslaughter, the 30-year-old is parole-eligible right now.

Blame the jury for that. Because manslaughter means parole after a minimum of seven years served. And Husbands has already spent seven and a half years behind bars for killing Nixon Nirmalendran and Ahmed Hassan — his friends, they’d grown up together in Regent Park — in a shooting at the crowded Eaton Centre food court on June 2, 2012.

A shooting that stunned the city. But Toronto is not so easily shocked anymore. That’s but one way this metropolis has changed in what feels like the blink of an eye.

Of course, we’re never to know why the jurors went for manslaughter last February. They can’t be asked to explain their decision, so significantly different from the double second-degree murder conviction reached by another jury, another trial, no parole for 30 years. Overturned on appeal.

A second kick at the can for Husbands, over a mere technicality.

It was left to Justice Brian O’Marra to impose some sanity on a case that has gone on and on and on. He sentenced Husbands to life on Friday for manslaughter-times-two. It will be for the parole board to determine what life means. Don’t hold your breath that life means life. Manslaughter isn’t murder. His top-drawer lawyers wrested that crucial distinction.

That Husbands remains imprisoned today is because O’Marra sentenced him to 14 years, the top end on a range of penalties for offences including five counts of aggravated assault, one count of criminal negligence causing bodily harm, one count reckless discharge of a firearm.

In reality, for time served — seven and a half years, with credit of 1.5 to 1, plus extra credit for the harshness of those circumstances, encompassing 669 days in segregation — the sentence knocks off a full decade of incarceration.

So: Sixteen months before parole eligibility.

For killing two people and injuring half a dozen. But for a fraction’s difference in the bullet that struck one of the victims in the head, a 13-year-old boy would have died too. Connor Stevenson, who was grabbing a bite with his mom and sister, his life saved by emergency responders who rushed him to hospital, by the doctors who performed miracles when they got him, and the surgeons who have six times cut into his brain since then. Connor has a metal plate along with shrapnel in his head, suffers from intense headaches still, forgetfulness, and will remain forever vulnerable to further head trauma.

Husbands apologized to Connor, now a Sheridan College student, and his family last week. But, except for lawyers, the judge and staff, the courtroom was empty. A publication ban covers the contents of his “apology.”

It is entirely natural, proper, to wonder — as Connor did outside the courtroom afterwards — if justice has been served.

“He’s just a horrible person who really doesn’t have any place living in Canada. He doesn’t deserve as many chances as he’s been given. He was out on bail. He violated every condition of his bail. When he gets out on parole, he’s going to violate every condition of his parole again. There were conditions that he wasn’t supposed to have a firearm. I have no faith that he’ll ever follow that.

“I don’t feel like I have any anger right now. He was given a sentence that was the best that we could have gotten right now. I just hope that he won’t get out.”

It’s a justice system that needs to give its own head a shake. There was little here that didn’t bring justice into disrepute. Scant satisfaction for Connor. Almost nothing, except in an inside-out sense — the aggravated assault more manifestly punitive than manslaughter, once all the credits were accounted for — for Tasnuva Mahmood, shot above the knee; Nicholas Kalakonis shot in the upper thigh; Hanna Kim, shot in the finger; Qin Chen, stomach grazed by a bullet; Kessia Frederick, pregnant and trampled by the panicked crowd, who went into premature contractions.

And the original trial verdict overturned because that judge had rejected a defence request for a specific method of selecting jurors, successfully argued at the Court of Appeal.

This judge, O’Marra, spent more than two hours reading his reasons for sentencing, in a courtroom (not half a kilometre from where the shooting occurred) where victim families sat on the right and Husbands’ family and supporters — he had quite a few — sat on the left. From Husbands himself — whippet-thin, bespectacled — there was no visible reaction. From his current girlfriend, someone who came to know Husbands long after he was taken into custody, a terse “No comment.”

To distil O’Marra’s 51-page reasons for sentence:

The shooting was not random.

The shooter was not in a dissociative state when he emptied his gun — firing 14 rounds, emptying the magazine of a gun he’d been carrying in a satchel.

The shooter was not mentally ill, though suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, the Crown agreeing with the defence on that point.

The shooter was already on bail and house arrest — convicted, while in jail, for sexual assault against a former girlfriend, nine months of that 12-month sentence deducted from this sentence.

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The shooter was not acting in self-defence, if rationally fearful of a threat the targeted victims posed — four months after two of those young men had participated in a brutal beating of the defendant, stabbed multiple times, reasons for that assault never disclosed in court.

Only the shooter testified that one of the men had said to another: “Shoot him.” Nobody else, including his girlfriend — who’d been at the scene — heard any such thing.

All those bullets, all that chaos. “He was totally reckless as to how many totally innocent bystanders could be caught in the line of fire,” said O’Marra. “Could this incident have been worse? Yes, it could easily have been three, four, five or more people killed … by his actions.”

The shooter was remorseful for killing two men. Yet, in letters sent to a former girlfriend from behind bars, his animus towards the victims was crystal clear. “I am in jail because these b---- ass n----- wanted to kill me over the most stupid thing that they made up more excuses to justifying their s---. I told these f------ goofs that this s--- would lead to no good. I am being prosecuted because of these brainless goofs that calls themselves gangsters.

“Many years have passed since the deaths and injuries were caused by Christopher Husbands. His professed remorse in 2019 stands in contrast to what he wrote in letters in 2012. His remorse today may be genuine. However, I find based on all of the evidence and information available that his remorse is ambiguous at best.”

Husbands was morally blameworthy, within the context of manslaughter. He’d never denied being the shooter, his actions in any event captured by miles of video surveillance. Hassan, 24, died where he fell. Nirmalendran, 22, succumbed to his critical wounds nine days later.

O’Marra spent considerable time recounting the wretchedness of Husbands’ life — born in Guyana to a crack-addicted mother who now has AIDS, he and siblings raised by their grandmother, father immigrated to Canada, where his son joined him in 2000. Had never experienced racism until he arrived in Canada, raised poor in Regent Park, expelled from high school for violence but, still, given enough of a helping hand by teachers and social workers who cared that he eventually graduated, had prospects though he turned to drug-dealing. Volunteered with younger kids. Has a child of his own.

All factors taken into account by O’Marra.

All factors that didn’t amount to a hill of beans for his victims.

Said Connor’s sister, Taylor, afterwards: “I feel really frightened to live here, knowing that criminals are let off as easily as we’ve seen now, because we’ve been part of the court system. We didn’t know before we were thrown into the mix.”

Connor Stevenson — who was not permitted to testify at the second trial, his evidence deemed too prejudicial — said he would definitely be attending Husbands’ parole hearings in the future.

“I hope he doesn’t make parole and I don’t think he will. But I feel scared for everybody in Toronto. He said that he was going to get revenge, in the letters that he wrote. So if he gets out, he’s going to shoot somebody else.

“I just hope it’s not another 13-year-old kid who gets shot in the crossfire.”

Rosie DiManno is a columnist based in Toronto covering sports and current affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno

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